Loughborough Gender and Politics

Monday, 17 October 2011

Christine Delphy - Rethinking Sex and Gender

This is another summary copied from another blogger. I have this tendency to copy as I look at the summaries of other people and don't think I could write anything nearly as useful. And if it's already there I'm not going to bother. Here is the link to the original:http://feministtheoryspring.blogspot.com/2010/02/delphy-summary.html. As usual, I've made a couple of additions and added a few comments at the end. And will change page numbers for quotes when I get the chance. Christine Delphy, Rethinking Sex and Gender, Summary: Delphy argues that the belief that sex is natural and thus comes before gender, which is social, is holding us back. First Delphy takes us through a history of feminist thought focused on the theme of division/hierarchy. The thinkers she included were primarily Margaret Mead and Ann Oakley. Mead sees hierarchy and the division of sex roles as natural, and Oakley writes on gender without questioning hierarchy or sex. Delphy's point will ultimately be that we treated differences without understanding the way they were positioned with a hierarchy. And we never questioned sex. We always assumed it was the natural given, the primary division or container to which we assigned contents. Instead, Delphy proposes we ask some difficult questions: Why should sex give rise to any sort of social classification (gender)? Is gender independent of sex? The Presupposition that sex causes gender comes from two assumptions the Delphy works to debunk: 1) The different sexes functions of procreation create some kind of division of labor. a. Delphy argues that these theories never explore how nature creates these divisions of labor and why that division of labor extends beyond procreative practices (since procreative roles is their reason for gender division). 2) Biological sex is destined to receive classifications (gender traits). Human beings need classifications and they need to base these classifications on physical traits. a. Delphy argues that this school never explains why the physical traits of sex become the means of classification when there are other physical traits just as prominent (things like height or weight, say). She also wonders why physical traits other than sex dont create dichotomies (two sets of mutually exclusive traits) and dont determine hierarchal roles. Delphy is returning to her opening distinction between division and hierarchy. b. Delphy critiques the application of Derridas difference to social hierarchies because she argues that distictions can be multiple rather than dichotomous. Here she uses vegetables as an example, that no vegetables are opposite to each other, and are not placed on a scale of value. None is better or worse than another, leaving the implication that this also should apply to people. Since we can no longer say that we necessarily socially organize in two dichotomous categories that have a hierarchy to create meaning, we can no longer argue that gender comes from the nature of social classification. Thus, Delphy posits her thesis: Gender comes BEFORE sex. Sex marks a social division. It allows social recognition and identification of those who are dominants and those who are dominated (63). In other words, hierarchy comes firstdominants and dominatedand society chooses the symbol of the penis and the vagina (sex markers) to explain the hierarchy. To explain this conclusion, Delphy cites that the various organs and indicators involved in sex get reduced to one trait for each, a penis and a vagina. She asks us to think about all the other physical traits involved in sex. She points out that the majority of indicators that decide our sex are continuous variables (occurring in varying degress, not simply one thing or another). By reducing sex to these two symbols, we create an easy dichotomy. Delphy argues then that sexbecause we reduce it down to two symbols, which itself is a social actis also social. Thus, we cant say nature leads to social because theyre both constructs of sorts. Sex is applied to divisions and distinctions which are social. The belief in sex as natural is one of the truths Delphy asks us to question. Very few indeed are happy to contemplate there being simply anatomically sexual differences which are not given any social significance or symbolic value. In other words, most people still find it unthinkable to imagine a world without sex, even though were eager to think of a world without gender or a world where gender traits get all mixed up. We want to keep the sexual divisions for various reasons Delphy cites, but she understands these divisions to be a social act that creates the hierarchy of gender and sex roles. Delphy concludes with a dream: We do not know what the values, individual personality traits, and culture of a non-hierarchical society would be like But to imagine it we must think that it is possible (67). Of course by this she implies that such a thing is a distant possibility. Comments: This is a useful work primarily for questioning something that is usually taken as a self-evident biological fact and providing sufficient evidence to show that sex is a social construct. So far I haven't been able to construct an argument against that, and believe me, I've tried. Hierarchy is a major factor in any society, whatever it is determined by. Other forms of hierarchy include class and age. Delphy asks us to believe in a non-hierarchical society, and I am skeptical of this. Whilst it may be possible to eliminate sex hierarchy, humans will always find some reason to dominate each other.
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